Azuma Makoto Turns Shrooms and Heavy Metals Into Art

For "Exobiotanica," the florist and artist Azuma Makoto sent plants into the Earth's stratosphere.

One was a 50-year-old Japanese white pine bonsai, from Makoto's personal collection, that he suspended within a cube-shaped metal frame.

The other was a verdant bouquet of flowers. With the help of helium balloons and a team of volunteers from JP Aerospace, Makoto sent these botanicals into the air. The plants didn't return, but footage from the mission did.

Those GoPro photos, seen here, are now on display at a New York City gallery called Chamber. They're part of a larger exhibit of Makoto's work.

The newest series on display is "Polypore."

Makoto collected these fossilized pieced of fungi from the woods in Japan, near where he lives and works in Tokyo. He then dipped each in gold, platinum, or copper leaf.

The juxtaposition is stark: Polypores feed off moisture and shade, and come from the densest part of the forest. Metals might come from the ground, but we’ve long disassociated them from anything organic. Gold, silver, and copper convey wealth and status.

This is what Makoto does best; he creates visual puns out of seemingly everyday objects, like this sofa covered in astroturf.

Same goes for the bicycle he covered in fake grass. It's man and nature, fused together.

Makoto’s “Botanical Bicycle” sculpture.

The "Crystal Seedcase" series includes glass containersin shaped like seeds, like an amaryllis, a sunflower, a soybean, and an avocado. This one is the avocado.

Each inorganic seed case is filled with real seeds. Makoto calls them "life-saving first aid kits," for the apocalypse.

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About two years ago, a Tokyo florist named Azuma Makoto started work on an unusual art project. With some wire, he suspended a 50-year-old Japanese white pine bonsai within a cube-shaped metal frame. The bonsai came from Azuma’s personal collection, and he designed the frame to dangle beneath a helium balloon that would carry the little tree into the stratosphere. Then he did the same with a lavish bouquet of flowers. Volunteers from JP Aerospace in California helped Azuma rig the unlikely satellites with GPS sensors and GoPro cameras to record the voyage. At dawn one morning in July, 2014, the tree rose from the playa of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert into the sky.

The bonsai and the bouquet never returned, but footage of the mission, called "Exobiotanica," did. The images show a wizened tree and a Mother’s Day-worthy bouquet juxtaposed against the edge of our planet. They're awe-inspiring. They’re currently appearing at a gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York, along with two bonsai suspended in their own steel frames. These trees won’t be sent aloft; Makoto built them for his capsule show at Chamber, an experimental exhibition space more than once described as a “cabinet of curiosities.” Indeed, the rest of Makoto’s show backs up that description: He's included a bicycle and a sofa covered in astroturf, an array of glass boxes shaped like seeds, and a smattering of fungi dipped in precious metals. The exhibit will be up through April 30.

Shiinoki / AMKK

The gilded polypores are Makoto’s newest work. He's spent the past few years foraging for them in the woods in Japan. Polypores grow on tree trunks and branches. When you remove them from bark, like Makoto did, they harden. He's collected more than 1,500 of the wrinkled fungi, which look like fossilized mushrooms, "always thinking to use them for a sculpture,” he told me through a translator. Six of them, each gilded in gold, platinum, or copper leaf, are on display at Chamber.

"Exobiotanica" pitted two opposing ideas—space and botany—against each other. The "Polypore" series does the same: Polypores feed off moisture and shade, and come from the densest part of the forest. Metals might come from the ground, but we’ve long disassociated them from anything organic. Gold, platinum, and copper convey wealth and status. "The idea is human meets nature," Azuma says of the expensive-looking fungi. The same theme plays out in the "Botanical" series or astroturf-covered items. In this way, Makoto is a bonafide Surrealist. His pieces are the spiritual grandchildren of Meret Oppenheim’s "Object" from 1936, in which the artist covered a teacup, saucer, and spoon with the fur of a Chinese gazelle. Each is a visual pun that toys with our assumptions about how everyday objects work by rendering them a bit useless. In Makoto's world, that's how these objects become all the more delightful.